Campaign Gone South
The way Harris sees it, a vast left- and right-wing conspiracy, encompassing both the "liberal media" and the Republican "elite," is attempting to keep her out of the Senate. She says anyone could see the way the panel of questioners coddled Nelson at their debate last week. Her voice gets all high and mocking as she imitates them. ...

Perhaps the worst blow to Harris's campaign has been the stories that have emerged from former staffers. They describe a Jekyll-and-Hyde candidate who can be seductively charming at one moment and pitch a temper tantrum the next, throwing a cellphone at a wall or a sheaf of papers at a campaign manager. Former chief adviser Ed Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan's reelection to the White House in 1984, said working for Harris was like "being in insanity camp." He likened her staff to dogs that have been kicked. ...

They worried about her clothes -- suit jackets and sweaters that were too tight, skirts that were too short. Rollins says an aide was dispatched to take her shopping for more senatorial apparel.

They worried about what one former field coordinator called her sense of "religious mission." Two former staffers -- Rollins and another onetime campaign manager, Jamie Miller -- have said Harris told them that God wanted her to be a senator. Rollins adds, "She told me that she thought she could be the first woman president." ...

The Harris campaign has suffered a series of embarrassing gaffes. According to one Florida paper, her Web site listed endorsements from people who hadn't endorsed her. According to another paper, her campaign organized a rally in an airport hangar, but none of the nine officials named on her flier showed up.

In the spring, Harris announced on television she was putting $10 million of her inheritance from her father into the race. Later, she said it turned out the inheritance would not be available, so she'd put in her own money. Thus far, she has put in approximately $3.2 million, which is, she says, "everything that I have liquid." ...

Later in the evening, while talking about her love for Queen Esther, she runs to the passenger seat of her SUV and seizes a Bible.

"I'll give you one verse," she says. "On the day that the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them, the opposite occurred, in that the Jews themselves overpowered those who hated them."